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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29846235">Fire's Version of Sleep</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsertSthMeaningful/pseuds/InsertSthMeaningful'>InsertSthMeaningful</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>X-Men - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Adventure, Ancient Egyptian Literature &amp; Mythology, BAMF Emma Frost, Blood, Creepy Sebastian Shaw, Erik Lehnsherr Knows a Domme When He Sees One, F/M, Minor Character Death, Sleeping Beauty Elements, Swordfighting, past Erik Lehnsherr/En Sabah Nur</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 22:55:29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,090</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29846235</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsertSthMeaningful/pseuds/InsertSthMeaningful</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>When Emma Frost sets out for Egypt in search of the pyramid of the great En Sabah Nur and the fallen god's precious consort slumbering within, she is prepared for a whole lot of trouble. That includes ancient booby traps, zombie scarabs and venomous cobras. </p><p>What she does not expect, however, is a run-in with Sebastian Shaw, her old tormentor. He, too, covets what she desires - and is willing to pay for it in blood.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Emma Frost/Erik Lehnsherr</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>X-Men Rare Pairs 2021</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Fire's Version of Sleep</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/NorthCompass/gifts">NorthCompass</a>.</li>



        <li>In response to a prompt by
            <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/NorthCompass/pseuds/NorthCompass">NorthCompass</a>  in the  <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/collections/xmenrarepairs21">xmenrarepairs21</a>
          collection.
        </li>
    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>
  <strong>Prompt:</strong>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Erik Lehnsherr was asleep.</p><p>This was probably not exactly what you had in mind with this single sentence, dear prompter, but my brain took one look at it and went <i>Sleeping Beauty AU go brrr</i>. Thank you so much for providing this inspiration, and I hope you enjoy it! </p><p>Title from Nick Flynn's <a href="https://poets.org/poem/sleeping-beauty">Sleeping Beauty</a></p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Erik Lehnsherr was asleep.</p><p>He had lain dormant like this for a long time now, dreaming of greatness as wars were waged all over the world. Around him, empires had crumbled, bastions of the people had fallen, and deities had been plunged into the sun, their robes aflame and their cries as summer rain upon the ears of their disciples.</p><p>All through the chaos, the Sleeper had persisted.</p><p>Sometimes, his eyelids twitched. Sometimes, his fingers flexed.</p><p>But he never woke up.</p><p>Now, however, there was something stirring in the bowels of the pyramid below him. Someone was treading the hallways, their steps echoing off the solid walls of limestone and granite.</p><p>The cool iron blade of a well-whetted sword. A brazen clasp fastening a shawl around someone’s head. Platinum, dense and stable, curled over the wary pulse of a heart as the machinery of a clock ticked the seconds away.</p><p>The Sleeper turned his head and sighed.</p><p> </p><p>Emma Frost let out a string of dainty curses under her breath and side-stepped the vicious trap she had just almost walked into.</p><p>Spikes, dropping down from the ceiling. Of <em>course</em>, there had to be spikes. It was like out of a bad adventure novel.</p><p>Sighing, she gripped the handle of her sword tighter and marched on, easily avoiding the trap door that opened but a hair’s breadth from her shoes as she walked past. Then, the obligatory battering ram came plunging down from above – she ducked to the side, let it swing by, and continued on her path when she could be sure that it wouldn’t come back for her.</p><p>Flesh-eating scarabs popped open under her heels and splattered their putrid innards over the sand-worn leather of her boots, and cobras scuttled away, hissing, as she soon as she came near.</p><p>“Oh, for god’s sake-”</p><p>A blade sliced through the air, missing the top of her head by inches. She glared as the strand of hair it <em>had </em>managed to raze off glimmered in the half-gloom and gently soared to the ground.</p><p>“You better be worth all the hassle, little Sleeper,” Emma grumbled, her palms slowly growing wet and slippery around the handle of her sword. Oh, but she bloody hated sweaty palms.</p><p>Not long now, though. If the moth-eaten maps she had obtained from an antiques trader in the bustling souq of Cairo were to be believed, what – or rather <em>who </em>– she was looking for lay right ahead, just around that bend leading off to the left. Sending out a tendril of her power, she was confirmed by the gentle lapping of a sleeping mind at her telepathy’s outmost borders.</p><p>She marvelled at the richly painted reliefs and finely woven wall hangings as she passed. They were almost untouched by age and vermin, only a bit dusty where the air stagnated heavy and still like molasses, unstirred by any breeze. It was no wonder that her path had been littered with bones and bodies, mummified by the dust-dry environment in which they had found death – many riches were to be uncovered here, so much fortune and glory to be obtained.</p><p>Emma, however, coveted only one thing.</p><p>The corridor behind the bend proved to be as unremarkable and boring as any normal floor she had ever walked, devoid of traps and vicious little critters. Emma allowed herself a triumphant grin. Why, she almost felt like yawning. Was that really all En Sabah Nur had got?</p><p>A sound, however, made her stop in her tracks and cock her head to listen.</p><p>That whisper… It had not been the dry wind of the desert howling around the mighty jut of the pyramid. It hadn’t been the skitter of a snake’s scales on the dusty floor, and it certainly had not come from any external sources. It had been the whisp of a thought, so different from the Sleeper’s gently dreaming mind.</p><p>Whatever it was – it was in there with her. Right in front of her, in the chamber she was looking at, lurking in the creeping darkness behind the gaping doorway.</p><p>The slab of granite once covering the opening had been pulverised.</p><p>And whatever it was, it could be mastered. Sucking in one last deep breath through her nose, Emma pushed her shoulders back and marched on into the billowing shadows.</p><p>Granite dust crunched under her feet as she stepped into the chamber and took in a noseful of the stale, used air. Someone had been breathing in there for a long, long time. She turned her head.</p><p>Oh. And there lay the one who had done all the breathing.</p><p>His limbs lax and sprawling like an inviting spread of sweet things, the Sleeper was bedded on plush-looking linen cushions on top of a broad, solid slab of limestone. The sides of the altar were carved with various insignia and scenes from times long gone past – the great En Sabah Nur and his precious consort, carrying the sun as the crowds of their admirers grappled at their feet – so artful it would have made any museum curator’s eyes water in awe. And yet, the true piece of art was the living, breathing man laid out on it like an offering.</p><p>Emma felt her blood rush places as mindless desire made her throat run dry.</p><p>To say that the Sleeper was scantily clad would have been an understatement. He was wearing nothing but a sheer loincloth of fabric woven so artfully that it was almost translucent, iridescent as a butterfly’s wings in the moonlight. Heavy bracelets of gold, inlaid with carnelian, turquoise and lapis lazuli, were locked around his wrists, ankles and neck, weighing him down onto the unblemished white bedding, and his ears and nipples were adorned with piercings of ivory and minuscule gems. There was a hint of kohl smudged over his eyelids, which fluttered gently every now and then.</p><p>Motes of dust danced lazily in a thin sliver of sunlight slanting in through a ventilation shaft in the ceiling, pouring over the Sleeper’s bone-white hair like honey. His ribcage heaved and lowered softly with his regular breaths, and his skin shimmered, shone almost. No bedsores – this was a magic sleep after all.</p><p>Then, the Sleeper sighed and turned his delicate face into the sunbeam, and Emma’s breath stuttered and died in her throat.</p><p>Her eyes only on the famed Consort of En Sabah Nur, she took a step forward-</p><p>-and recoiled as a shadow jerked forth from the half-gloom beyond the Sleeper’s cradle.</p><p>“Take one step closer to him – attempt to wake him – and you die,” it snarled, the face of a man slowly peeling forth from under its darkness.</p><p>Emma barely resisted the urge to press a hand over her hammering heart. She squinted, recognising the familiar features of her en-face.</p><p>“Lord Shaw,” she rasped out more than said. Suddenly, there was the copper tang of adrenaline on her tongue. “Well, I was not expecting to find <em>you </em>here.”</p><p>The man in front of her smiled condescendingly. Just like her, he was wearing the clothes of someone who had journeyed a long way from his homeland – his light cotton vest was dusty, his leather boots battered and nicked at places, and a nasty-looking scimitar hung from his belt. The desert sun and dry wind had thrown a sickly tan over his piggish features.</p><p>“Why, sweet little <em>Emma Frost,”</em> he sneered, crushing a delicate wreath of dried-up cornflowers under his heel as he took a step towards her. The floor of the chamber was littered with such gifts – little figurines and clay pots, baskets of mummified fruit and papyrus scrolls, knocked over by Sebastian Shaw’s careless entrance. “I thought I had heard scurry someone after me before. What could the wealthy, fickle heiress of the Frosts possibly could have come looking for in here, all alone and so far from home? Some nifty little trinket? Or a diamond collar, perhaps?”</p><p>Emma quelled down on the anger flaming up in her chest at Shaw’s words. She, of all people, should know best that that was how he worked - he provoked, sent his opponent flying into a fit of rage, and then, the very moment they had forgotten what immense and lethal power he possessed, he struck.</p><p>Her voice shaking despite herself, she answered, “I am not here for gaudy jewellery. I’ve outgrown that age.” With a tilt of her head, but never letting Shaw out of her eyes, she indicated the Sleeper slumbering obliviously on the altar of granite. “I’ve come for him.”</p><p>Shaw’s eyebrows rose. “Oh, have you now?” His hand went to the handle of his sword. “Well, you’re out of luck – I was here first.”</p><p>Emma curled her mouth into a mockingly affected o-shape, parroting his question back at him. “Oh - <em>were you now?</em>”</p><p>With a snarl, Shaw yanked his scimitar from its scabbard and charged towards her. A tinkle like from minuscule silver bells could be heard as Emma shifted into her diamond form and responded in kind, drawing her own sword.</p><p>Then, everything went very fast. </p><p>Their blades clashed in a vicious glint of metal on metal, and on his linen bedding, the Sleeper moaned, a frisson running over his bare body. Neither of the two duellists paid him any heed – Shaw was jabbing for Emma’s wrists and sides, and she was busy blocking his attacks, twisting out of his reach when her sword could not block the path of his blade. Her diamond flesh glimmered in the chamber’s half-gloom like a Fata Morgana as she twirled her weapon.</p><p>Shaw’s scimitar looked like he had pilfered it from one of the bodies littering the corridors of the pyramid – its blade was jagged and rust-encrusted, with ugly little indents. It screeched noisily over the smooth, sharp iron of Emma’s longsword any time she parried one of his attacks, and always slid off harmlessly like water off a duck’s plumage.</p><p>As she danced out of Shaw’s reach time and time again and took care not to supply him with too many energetic blows, Emma gathered her strength. The blade in her hands had once been her father’s, and his mother’s before him, hung in the place of honour on the wall of the dining room in Frost Manor when it had not been used to defend her family’s blood. As soon as she had got word of the pyramid of En Sabah Nur’s consort being uncovered, Emma had taken the longsword down, dusted it off and secured it at her side, taking it out of its scabbard only once when she had commissioned a knife grinder from Cairo to sharpen its blade.</p><p>In her life, she had had to fend a great many battles for herself. This one was not any different.</p><p>“Curse you, you little witch!” Shaw spat as she once again gave him the slip and dealt his blade a juddering blow. Suddenly adopting a more defensive strategy, he took one of his hands off the hilt of his sword and turned it towards her, palm out. “This will teach you!”</p><p>Before Emma could react, a sizzling stream of pure energy burst forth from his skin and enveloped her whole, driving her back across the floor. Fighting hard to keep her balance, she dug her heels into the stone. Under the fiery onslaught, the cotton shawl wrapped around her hair smouldered away, and the leather harness beneath her shrivelling traveller’s tunic creaked and groaned in the heat. But her skin, diamond-hard and persevering, remained intact.</p><p>When Shaw lowered his hand, sweat beading together on his temples, Emma raised her head and smiled.</p><p>“My turn,” she said and spread her arms, a psionic shockwave crashing forth from her mind and sweeping Shaw off his feet.</p><p>He didn’t even have time to scream before he crashed into the opposite wall and slid to the floor, so dazed that he let go of the scimitar. Already, a thin, promising trickle of blood was starting to seep from his nose.</p><p>Emma levelled an indulgent gaze on him as she picked her way across the floor, her sword hanging confidently by her side. He saw her coming, his dead, grey eyes widening. He groaned and attempted to pick himself up, shaking with exertion. And yet, they both knew that there was nowhere for him to run to anymore.</p><p>Lodging the tip of her blade under his chin, she tilted his head to look up at her.</p><p>“Whatever it was that you wanted to teach me, Sebastian-” with growing satisfaction, she savoured the taste of genuine fear pouring off him- “it’ll have to wait.”</p><p>She did not give him enough time to recover as she bent down, grabbed the collar of his vest and lifted him off his feet, keeping his gift under tight wrap and out of his reach. His hands came to claw at her wrists, useless against her diamond grip.</p><p>Emma mimed a doleful pout. “Goodbye, sweet, little Sebastian.”</p><p>Then, with a mere flick of her wrist, she sent the tip of her sword plunging between Shaw’s ribs and straight into his heart.</p><p>He choked. He writhed. He screamed. He tried to reach forward and gauge out her eyes, one last desperate attempt at ridding himself of her telepathic grip and gain the chance to heal himself – but all for naught. His own blood was drowning his every breath, running down the blade of Emma’s sword and dripping from her fingers, stark red against the crystal-clear white of her diamond flesh.</p><p>Emma’s cool gaze met his, and for the last time, he sent her that withering, dead-eyed glare, the one she had cowered under when she had been but a girl, a young woman who hadn't known any better.</p><p>She responded to his sparking, burning anger with an overpowering sense of indifference, then let go of his collar and watched as he slid from the tip of her sword onto the floor.</p><p>There, he lay still and moved no more.</p><p>Emma considered the slumped, bloody bundle of what had once been an ambitious man, before she prodded it with the tip of her boot, listening for last signs of life. She was greeted with sheer nothingness – both in body and mind.</p><p>Sebastian Shaw was dead. And she had been the one to kill him.</p><p>Suddenly, the full extent of her actions rushed in on her, almost sending her toppling to the floor as her mind caught up with what her body had just accomplished. Her hand trembling, she sheathed her longsword and, sucking in a few long, desperate breaths of the stagnant air, stumbled over to the richly embellished granite altar where the Sleeper was still slumbering, undisturbed.</p><p>Shaw’s blood smeared over the smooth surface of the stone as she propped herself up on its edge, relieving her weakening legs. The psionic assault had sapped her power considerably, especially paired with the long, heated dromedary ride from Cairo to En Sabah Nur’s pyramid baking under the desert sun. She did not dare to shift back into her form of flesh and blood, for fear of collapsing from dehydration and fatigue.</p><p>Her head was pounding. The beam of light falling in through the ventilation shaft and pouring over the Sleeper’s breath-taking features was slowly receding, following the sinking path of the sun.</p><p>She blinked. The Consort’s sleep, so agitated during her duel with Shaw, had quieted down considerably, so that the man now lay perfectly still and snug on his linen bedding. His chest heaved and sunk quietly, and every now and then, a barely audible mewl fell from his slightly open lips.</p><p>Again, Emma had trouble breathing - but this time around because of a much, much more delightful reason.</p><p>She leaned over and gently, very gently, cupped the Sleeper’s cheek with the hand that wasn’t stained with Shaw’s blood.</p><p>Her heart leaped in her throat when the man promptly leaned into the touch and let hear something like a subdued whisper. The heat of his skin was as fire against the cool of her diamond flesh, sending sparks up and down her spine, and then she found herself sliding closer, up towards the headrest of the altar.</p><p>Emma had travelled so far, risked so much, fought so hard. Now, it was time to claim her reward.</p><p>Panting, she bent over the Sleeper’s still form.</p><p> </p><p>Erik Lehnsherr was awakening.</p><p>There was a sweet, gentle pressure against his lips that disappeared as soon as he leaned up to respond in kind. Dismayed, he opened his eyes – and groaned, a blinding pain shooting through his head.</p><p>“Ah-” Blinking furiously, he tried to see past the sudden brightness, discerning something like an unnaturally shimmering human form in the twilight of his chamber. Was this a spirit from the World of the Dead? Had he been woken only to be carried off to the Weighing of his Heart?</p><p>If so, he would fight to the last to remain in the land of the living. He had a duty to his husband, and he would do his utmost to keep it.</p><p>A cool grip wrapping around his upper arm startled him, and then there was a voice, soft, but insistent. “Put that down.”</p><p>As his vision slowly regained strength, he glared at the translucent apparition bending over him – and made no move to lower the avalanche of daggers he had summoned from the floor around him.</p><p>“Who are- Where is my husband?” he rasped out, taken aback by the dryness of his mouth.</p><p>It was a woman sitting by his side – or at least he guessed so. What he did not have to guess, however, was that she was very beautiful. A smile was etched into her face, which seemed chiselled from the clearest of quartz, and there was an evenness to her features which stunned him into silence.</p><p>One of her hands was blood-sodden. And though her clothes were half-charred, Erik saw that they had to be quite unlike the robes and garments he was used to from his husband’s culture.</p><p>“How long-?” He cleared his throat and watched as worry flashed across the woman’s face. “How long has it been?”</p><p>Despite his omissions, she seemed to catch his meaning instantly. “Three-hundred years,” she said in a strange, outlandish accent, a mask of fabricated aloofness sliding back over her features.</p><p>Erik groaned. “He was meant to wake me after one third of that time. I am going to kill my husband.”</p><p>“No need. The great En Sabah Nur perished two-hundred years ago in a war even greater than him.”</p><p>The coolness of her words snatched every word from Erik’s lips. His husband? His spouse? The most powerful mage to have ever lived – gone?</p><p>The daggers clattered to the floor as his strength suddenly left him and he fell back against the linen cushions. “No,” he breathed, desperately trying – and failing – to clench down on the shaking in his fingers, “no, this cannot be-”</p><p>“It is,” said the woman softly, and her hands came to cover his, not caring for the blood she smeared over his skin. “The world as you have known it – it is no more.”</p><p>He lifted his gaze to her cool eyes which glittered like gems, a begging, a pleading in his soul – for what, even he himself did not know.</p><p>“But I will take care of you now,” she continued, understanding him better than he understood himself. The smile returned. “Your name must be Erik. Mine is Emma. Let me be your guide in this new time.”</p><p>Erik, suddenly very aware of his almost complete nakedness under her roaming eyes, levelled her with as calm a gaze as he could manage. He pretended he didn’t feel the excited flush blooming on his cheeks.</p><p>They remained frozen like that for a little eternity – two predators measuring each other, knowing they were equals in all but name.</p><p>At last, Erik took the decision he deemed most appropriate. He cleared his throat.</p><p>“I accept,” he said, and watched the coy smile widen into a triumphant grin.</p><p> </p><p>It soon proved that the spell which had kept Erik asleep for hundreds of years had also considerably sapped his strength. Emma was obliged to gather him in her arms and pick him up, carrying him in bridal style as she started for the corridor from which she had emerged into the chamber.</p><p>A hand on her arm stopped her. Erik was motioning for her to turn around.</p><p>No sooner had she followed his instructions than he waved his hand, and a whole chunk of the chamber’s solid limestone wall peeled away, revealing a ramp gently sloping down the side of En Sabah Nur’s pyramid.</p><p>Emma huffed out a quiet laugh. “I shouldn’t even be surprised anymore.”</p><p>Erik did not respond. In fact, he clung to her with rather more contempt than gratefulness – not exactly what she had expected, given that she was the one who had rescued him from an enchanted sleep.</p><p>Then again, he <em>had </em>just woken up. Maybe he simply wasn’t a morning person.</p><p>As she carried him so down the side of the pyramid, taking care not to slide and slip on the withered stone, she couldn’t help but draw in his sweet, strange scent in big bouts of air. He smelled of myrrh and saffron, dust and faded sunlight. Every now and then, his cheek brushed up against her shoulder, and his head turned as he let his awed gaze wander over the dusk-bathed dunes of sand stretching to the horizon.</p><p>“Once upon a time,” he murmured, in this strange accent of times gone by, “this was inhabited land. There were temples, marketplaces, embalmers’ shops. All gone now.”</p><p>“Razed to the ground in the war,” Emma confirmed. There was no reason to embellish things for him.</p><p>They had reached the foot of the pyramid now, and her joints were starting to ache as she set off towards where she had tied up her dromedary. Erik tightened his grip around her shoulders, burying his face against her neck.</p><p>She pretended like her breath didn’t hitch.</p><p>In the end, it turned out that Shaw had bound down his dromedary not far from Emma’s, and so they did not have to alternate between who would walk and who would ride. Emma helped Erik onto his mount, before she swung herself into the saddle, groaning when her aching limbs could finally relax. Erik, in the meantime, wrapped the woollen cloak she had given him around his shoulders, effectively concealing his almost naked form and the with no doubt precious jewellery he still wore.</p><p>Then, they rode, making for Cairo as the sun set and the stars came out. Emma emptied half her waterskin before she tossed it over to Erik, noting the way his eyes flickered to her still blood-smeared hand before he caught it gracefully in mid-air.</p><p>After he had quenched his first, he indicated the rust-red blotches of blood with a nod of his head. “So, you killed a man for me?”</p><p>Emma rolled her hips into the rhythmic pace of her dromedary. The moonlight was sprinkling silvery accents into her once more blond hair, and her breath congealed in the rapidly cooling air. She knew she had to make an alluring image.</p><p>“I sure did, darling.”</p><p>He nodded, and for the first time since she had woken him, his face broke into something other than contempt or fear. Prodding his mount into a quicker pace, he drew level with her, something like respect dawning in his eyes as he said, “I owe you a blood debt. Please, accept my life-long servitude until you feel I’ve repaid your bravery.”</p><p>Under that spoiled, skittish exterior, Emma supposed, was just another raw diamond only waiting to be shaped into perfection – and by none other than her. She knew she was perfect for the job.</p><p>Nodding her assent, she nonetheless said, “Bold of you to assume I would even have asked for your consent in the first place, sugar. You’re mine. I claimed you when I took that spell off you, and I was always going to find a way to get reimbursed for my pains.”</p><p>She expected him to level her with a look of indignation, or to lash out and rebel against her newly established authority.</p><p>Instead, she got to watch as his pupils dilated darkly in the moonshine, before he lowered his gaze obediently and slowed his dromedary’s pace to fall in behind her. She smiled.</p><p>Oh, and how <em>eager</em> to be shaped this diamond was.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Kudos and especially comments will be much appreciated!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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